Ensuring Productivity

To increase the operating profits it is necessary to increase productivity of the manpower. The managers should help employees in achieving excellence in cleaning and high productivity in their sphere of activity. The owners should create the right workplace atmosphere and set the stage for their employees to tackle quality and productivity demands.

It is stated fact that the poorly trained cleaners results in low profitability thus organized labor and other factors on which quality and productivity depends should not be taken easy. Cleaning professionals will respond to sincere praise. They have tremendous impact on the quality and productivity of a cleaning department or contractor.

To ensure achieving goals set by management, major areas of operations should not be neglected and special emphasis should be laid on parameters effecting quality and productivity.

Communication

The employees should be clearly communicated the objectives of the tasks to be performed. They should clearly establish what the building should look like and how to achieve it. Often as managers we get distracted by other priorities when communicating with the people and we don’t clearly define how we want the task done or to what standard.

Standards

There has to be one single standard of parameters defining the performance of the people. You need to get your employees on the same page in terms of the quality of cleaning they and others perform. If you get employees to agree on a standard, they become mobile parameters and can go around and tell you what condition a floor is in.

Accountability

It is very important to make people accountable for what they do. Define and establish what the value of the actions they are performing and the value of the overall job to them, the building occupants and the cleaning company or department. Bad jobs always sometimes result in greater losses. Contractor can loose contracts forever if some drastic procedures result in a damage to the property. The hard work gone in the building an account goes waste and also the chance for future business. In the competitive environment you cannot take chance with unskilled manpower.

Threshold

Set a tolerance level for aptitude or efficiency dictating at what point you responds to a cleaner’s lack of either or both. Thresholds have to be set and adhered to by managers. Set a tolerance level for aptitude or efficiency. Be cautious to balance criticism by praising often. Like everyone else, cleaning professionals will respond to sincere praise. And, always be fair and balanced with the tolerance level and don’t make exceptions unless there are other mitigating factors.

Developing System
It is not the person who performs; it is the system that defines work and workers performs to it. System provide plan for the work to be performed and that plan is what works to perform the task. Determine how to establish a system that allows the cleaner to achieve the goals, such as supplying the right tools, cleaning chemicals, hours to perform the work, etc. In order to analyse and monitor the standard of the cleaning performed by the worker, system can provide growth chart of the performance of the worker. Proper MIS (Management Information System) can be created to analyse if the system is working properly

Education
Education on the part of occupants or the cleaners is one major aspect of managing productivity. If the precaution is better than cure than one should see how at first control the reason that generates the need for cleaning. Determine a way to reduce the amount of work cleaners must do. An example is contacting building occupants that are major offenders of office cleanliness and appealing to them to stop trashing the place. Other examples of ways to reduce input and thereby improve cleaner efficiency and quality include, litter control programs and walk-on mats.

Consistency
Consistency is another key to managing a highly productive, high quality cleaning staff. Consistency should be key to establishing, implementing and adhering to all departmental or company policies.

In gauging that consistency, establish whether:

• The training given and the quality of cleaning expectations mesh
• The training and quality assurance are consistent
• The performance criteria and consistent with the expectations
• The written guidelines and those told verbally to cleaners by supervisors are the same
• Cleaners are given a venue for feedback
• The level of service to be provided is communicated to building occupants.